Elections and their associated campaigns are important, complex and an great example of a “spikey one shot deal workload”. Simon speaks with Michael Jackson (Strategy Lead, State & Local Government, AWS) and Leo Zhadanovsky (Principal Solutions Architecture, AWS) about how Elections are run on AWS and some great “war stories” from past campaigns.

Do you have SFTP in your environment? How about need to do a lift-and-shift of a high volume system? Simon speaks with Jeff Thorn, CEO of Thorn Technologies about how they have helped customer overcome these and other challenges using AWS.

With the GA launch of AWS Greengrass and bundled support for embedded Lambda Compute in Snowball Edge appliances, AWS is broadening the scope of opportunity for customers with varying edge computing needs. Simon speaks with Todd Varland and Ian Perez Ponce about what "edge computing" really means and the emerging use cases they see across a range of industry sectors. They also discuss the value Snowball Edge delivers as a hybrid platform capable of providing ephemeral compute resources and petabyte-scale storage virtually anywhere.

How do you manage fast time to market whilst maintaining governance in a large Enterprise? AWS Service Catalog can help! Simon speaks with Clive D’Souza (Global Head of Business Development for AWS Service Catalog) about how customers are modernising their governance and deployment processes.

Gaming, media and entertainment have never been bigger business. Amazon Polly makes it easy to add voice for both static and dynamic content; developers can animate avatars and highlight text as it is currently spoken in mobile apps and video games, or vocalize dynamic content&nbsp;on the fly. Simon speaks with Robin Dautricourt, Product Manager for Amazon Polly and Felix Duchesneau, Software Development Manager for Amazon Lumberyard. They share a few of the ways in which text-to-speech can be used to lower cost and increase efficiency for (pre-production/ production/localization) development, increase accessibility, and enhance overall user experience with voice commands.

You have AWS questions? We have answers! Simon speaks with Garvit Singh (Solutions Builder) and John Stamper (Principal Solutions Builder) about solutions that have been built for use by AWS customers. These are fully deployable via AWS CloudFormation and available as Open Source as both a complete solution or the basis for your own extensions.

Simon speaks with Ken Eisner, Senior Manager of Worldwide AWS Education Programs about AWS Educate. Are you an educator looking for up-to-date content for your curriculum? Are you a student wanting to get modern, relevant qualifications? Do you want to “re-skill” yourself with some of the most valued technical skills in the market? Take a listen to how the AWS Educate program can help - PLUS a special code for $150 of AWS Credit is shared in the episode (NOTE: code valid to 31st December 2017).

App developers spend incredible time, resources, and effort to grow their app audiences, but once you've acquired a user, it's easier and cheaper to retain and engage them via messaging and notifications. In this podcast we introduce AWS Pinpoint for engaging with your users and getting app and user analytics to drive your business.

Amazon Polly is a service that turns text into lifelike speech, making it easy to develop applications that use high-quality speech to increase engagement and accessibility. In this episode Simon speaks with Robin Dautricourt, Product Manager for Amazon Polly to introduce Amazon Polly and walk through popular use cases in specific industries where Amazon Polly's natural sounding voices improve user experience and enables new ways to consume content: Learning/Education, Gaming, Content Creation and Telephony. Learn about real-world scenarios and examples of how to incorporate text-to-speech into their capabilities.

Amazon AppStream 2.0 is a fully managed, secure application streaming service that allows you to stream desktop applications from AWS to any device running a web browser, without rewriting them. Simon speaks with Deepak Suryanarayanan, Senior Product Manager at AWS, about how customers can use AppStream 2.0 to deliver their applications more efficiently.

In this episode Simon speaks with Carla Cole (Vice President, Sales) and Mick Bass (Senior Vice President, Big Data Practice) at 47Lining along with Chris Perkins (AWS) about the AWS Quick Start for Data Warehouse Modernization and how you can get the most from it.

One of the biggest problems in the mobile application industry is optimizing the user on-boarding process. For most applications, you can't really monetize your app until a user has signed up. But implementing and managing all of the complex machinery needed to create a user identity and access systems is time consuming and not your core competency. App developers can save time, money, and effort by using AWS Cognito for on-boarding users and managing their identity, authorization, authentication, and resource access policies.

Did you want to get Alfresco up and running fast, securely and reliably on AWS? Listen to how Alfresco (Toni de la Fuente, Cloud Architect and Leader of Security Operations, Alfresco) and AWS (Santiago Cardenas, Partner Solutions Architect, AWS) created a Quick Start for you to do just that!

One of the biggest problems for mobile app developers is delivering quality applications that get high ratings and reviews in the app store. All it takes is a few bad ratings, and users will be unlikely to even download your application. One of the keys to producing quality mobile applications is thorough testing, but individual developers can't afford to own thousands of devices, let alone manage the infrastructure for running test harnesses against all those devices. In this episode, we introduce AWS Device Farm that lets mobile app developers test their apps against a wide array of mobile devices and catch bugs early so you can focus on introducing new features and functionality to delight your users rather than spending all your cycles responding to and fixing issues reported in reviews and rankings.

Where do you store your sensitive config info and passwords for your applications? In this episode Simon dives into the Parameter Store and how you can use it to protect and access your sensitive data.

Simon speaks with Philip “Fitz” Fitzsimons, Global Well-Architected Lead, and Herman Coomans, Senior Solutions Architect, all about the AWS Well Architected framework. They discuss what it consists of, how customers can apply it, and what they have learned.

It is time again to catch up on a raft of updates for customers! This week’s updates include: AWS Trusted Advisor, Amazon Workspaces, AWS IoT Button, AWS Mobile Hub, Amazon ECS and Amazon DynamoDB just to name a few!

In the early stages, hiring the right people can be as critical as an original great idea. In this episode we’re joined by Andrew Thompson, ex-VP of Engineering at Yoyo Wallet and Will Bentinck, Head of Careers at Makers Academy who talk about their views and approaches to startup recruitment.

Simon speaks with Roger Barga, General Manager for Amazon Kinesis, about how streaming is changing the way organisations are building systems and creating modern, responsive interactions with their customers.

Having a scalable idea is a dream of any startup founder. But with multiple markets and countries to consider, putting that idea into action is a whole new ballgame. Hear how AWS customer and startup success Once, a dating app with a unique approach, nailed its global strategy, and how it’s accelerating growth in 11 countries and counting.

This week in the AWS Startup Stories special, Darren talks to Anne Boden, CEO & founder of Starling Bank, about her experience on building a mobile only bank from scratch, dealing with regulators, and launching a public API Marketplace.

In this episode of Startup Stories we cover VC funding and how to build longlasting relationships with investors. You will hear both sides of the story from Robin Klein, General Partner at VC fund Local Globe on what he looks for when making investments, and Hal Watts, CEO of tech-fashion Unmade, a company Robin invested in, on his experience finding investment.

In the second episode of the AWS Startup Stories special, Darren talks to two special guests innovating on AWS in the fintech space. Tom Blomfield, CEO and founder of Monzo, mobile-only bank, and Darren Westlake, CEO and co-founder of Crowdcube, the world’s first equity crowdfunding platform, discuss crowdfunding for startups.

In this episode Simon discusses the importance of re-visiting Services to ensure you reduce the amount of undifferentiated heavy lifting you have in your architecture. Then he covers a raft of updates big and small.

In this first episode of the AWS Startup Stories special, Darren Mowry, Head of Startup Business Development and Venture Capital at AWS EMEA, talks to Tessa Cook, co-founder and CEO of food sharing app and AWS startup customer Olio, about growing a social enterprise and building a loyal fan base with an almost non-existent marketing budget.

In this episode Simon talks about Amazon Lightsail with Emily Kruger, Product Manager for Amazon Lightsail. They discuss what it can be used for, and where customers get the most benefit. https://amazonlightsail.com/

In this episode Simon chats with Matt Hackett, CTO at Beme (now acquired by CNN), all about how Beme was built and some of the challenges of building video-related apps today vs in the “old days” at his time at Tumblr. This Startup Spotlight is brought to you by Intel and AWS.

In this episode Simon chats with Jon Handler, Principal Solutions Architect, about scaling and securing the Amazon ElasticSearch Service with some deeper-dive examples of what to do. https://aws.amazon.com/elasticsearch-service/

Simon is a long-time Amazonian, passionate about helping customers get the most out of cloud technology. A pragmatic technologist at heart, Simon holds an Honours Degree in Information Systems from Monash University.

Jeff Barr has been an Amazon employee since 2002. As Chief Evangelist, he focuses on spreading the word about AWS through the AWS blog and select in-person appearances. Jeff holds a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science and a Master’s degree in Communication and Digital Media.